Certain reed woodwind musical instruments, such as the oboe, the clarinet, the English horn and the straight saxophone, require the musician to hold the instrument by the musician's mouth embouchure and by the musician's hands, while simultaneously requiring the embouchure to be flexible enough to achieve the desired range of reed vibration and requiring the fingers to be flexible and moveable enough to move all of the keys when playing the instrument. One consequence of these requirements for simultaneous stability and flexibility is that the support arrangement for the instrument can not limit the flexibility of the musician's fingers or mouth. As a result, an oboe, clarinet, English horn and straight saxophone all include a thumbrest which rests on the thumb of the musician's right hand. The right hand thumb contacts the body of the instrument leaving the remaining fingers of the right hand fully unrestricted to contact the key pads of the instrument. The fingers and the thumb of the musician's left hand are all available to contact key pads.
The substantial majority of the weight of the instrument is supported by the thumb of the musician's right hand, since the embouchure can not support the weight of the instrument and still remain flexible enough to play the instrument, and because the fingers of the left hand must remain free to contact the keypads. As a result, considerable strain in the hand and on the right thumb may be experienced by the musician during prolonged musical performances or practice sessions. The stresses are aggravated when the hand and finger positions are changed to non-ergonomic positions to attempt to compensate for the strain. For professional and student musicians, the strain may become so unbearable and thus hinder the ability to play the instrument. Worse still, repeated strain may cause severe and permanent injuries of a nature similar to repetitive motion injuries. Promising musical careers have been compromised or abandoned because of an inability to overcome the problems associated with supporting these types of instruments by hand from the conventional thumbrest.
One of the conventional methods of relieving the weight on the instrument is to use a neck support strap, similar to that used with much heavier instruments such as the conventional S shaped baritone and bass saxophones. The neck strap includes a hook which fits through an eye formed in the thumbrest. The length of the neck strap is adjusted to position the oboe, clarinet, English horn or straight saxophone at the proper embouchure position for the musician. The weight of the instrument is therefore supported from the musician's neck by the neck strap.
While the well-known neck strap support is effective in relieving the physical strain on the musician's thumb and hand, it causes other difficulties. Over time, the weight of the instrument causes the musician to naturally bend forward at the neck and in the upper chest, altering the musician's posture. The forward bend in the musician's neck and chest region has the very undesirable effect of restricting the amount of air which the musician can inhale and expel through the instrument. The restricted air flow substantially diminishes the tone and intonational qualities of the musical notes which the musician is able to make. In general very few musicians consider a neck strap to be a viable solution to the problem of thumb and hand strain while playing an oboe, clarinet, English horn or straight saxophone.
Other attempts to relieve the musician of holding the instrument have included chest support devices which are attached to the musician's chest and project forwardly to connect to the thumbrest of the instrument. These chest support devices offer little if any advantage over a conventional neck strap support, and in any event have not achieved significant acceptance by musicians.
Another type of support for a clarinet is a wrist strap which extends from the musician's wrist, between the thumb and forefinger and to the instrument at a location near a bell of the instrument. The lower end of the strap is attached by a belt which is attached around the body of the instrument. The length of the strap is adjusted to position the hand in the desired location and to relieve the weight on the thumb. Wrist support devices of this type also Have not achieved acceptance, possibly due to a number of reasons including: the constriction on the hand between the thumb and the forefinger; the different feel of the instrument due to its support near the bell rather than in the middle near the center of balance of the instrument; the requirement to attach the belt to the body of the instrument near the bell; or because of other factors.
Another type of support for some types of musical instruments is an extendable monopod support which is attached rigidly to the instrument to project straight to the floor. The rigid support requires the instrument to be played in a stationary position, which restricts many musicians who prefer to express artistic style by moving while playing the instrument. The rigid extension also has the effect of limiting the orientation of the instrument in the musician's mouth, and may induce additional unnatural forces on the instrument which also makes it harder to play.
A variety of other types of instrument support devices have been created and used for other types of musical instruments, particularly the heavier instruments such as baritones, sousaphones and S shaped saxophones. These other types of support devices are virtually required because of the considerably greater weight of those instruments. In addition, these larger instruments do not require the same physical dexterity necessary for playing the oboe, clarinet, English horn and straight saxophone.
In spite of the variety of different types of support devices for a wide variety of different musical instruments, none of these have proved to offer a solution which is acceptable to musicians. The prior support devices have proved to be too cumbersome, require too much time and care to install and set up for use, have been unreliable from a durability standpoint, or have unreasonably restricted the motion of the musician while playing the instrument. It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has evolved.